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Thursday, July 29, 2010

After 40 years as a Congressman, Charlie Rangel will stand trial on 13 counts of ethics violations after his attorneys failed to negotiate a settlement with the House Ethics Committee. Such trials are rare, the last being held in 2002.

It also increases the possibility that Rangel's fellow Democrats will
call for his resignation. If found guilty, he faces everything from
expulsion to censure. Either way, Rangel's legacy has been scarred
because of the charges.

A somber-sounding Rangel could not hide his emotions. "Sixty years ago, I
survived a Chinese attack in North Korea and have said that I haven't
had a bad day since," Rangel said. "But after today, I may have to
revise that statement."

The trial and charges represent a remarkable turn of events for a man
regarded as one of the deans of Democratic politics. Rangel coveted the
chair of the House Ways and Means committee and waited decades to get it
before these charges forced him to step aside.

Rangel is being investigated for his use of four rent-controlled
apartments in Harlem, using Congressional letterhead to raise money for a
New York City College center for public service bearing his name, not
reporting income and assets and preserving a tax loophole for a group
that donated to the City College center.

Democrats have been pushing for a settlement to avoid the spectacle of a
trial months before the November mid-term elections. Some have begun
calls for Rangel's resignation.

Rangel was apparently unwilling to admit to the terms of a deal which
would have required him to admit to multiple and serious ethics
violations.

A Republican ethics committee member called the charges "very serious.'

"Mr. Rangel...was given opportunities to negotiate a settlement under the investigation phase," said Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Tex.)
a member of the ethics committe. "We are now in the trial phase...For
Mr. Rangel, these proceedings present a fair and public opportunity to
be heard before his peers."

Still, many in Rangel's Harlem district have maintained they will
support him because they believe the charges are overblown. He faces a
primary challenge in September but many believe he will be re-elected.

Some also think the damage to Democrats will be limited.

"I think it's a sad and isolated case that will have a limited impact," Rep. Gerald E. Connolly told the Washington Post. "I don't think it's going to be a dispositive issue in the election."

"I was at several festivals this weekend in conservative-leaning counties, and I didn't get asked a single time about it," Rep. Tom Perriello told the Washington Post.

An Ohio woman who helped counsel countless couples experiencing marital discord was found stabbed to death on Monday. The suspect is her husband.

Tonya Hunter(pictured below), owner of the marriage counseling service Success 1 Services in Bedford Heights, Ohio, met her husband, Maurice Lyons (pictured above), last year, when he attended a class that she taught on anger management. The 42-year-old woman married Lyons last December, but almost immediately, the marriage grew sour because it was fraught with financial problems: Hunter owned two homes, which are both facing foreclosure; had college loans; credit cards; and a car loan debt that totaled to nearly $500,000.

There were two police reports filed by Hunter against her husband for domestic violence. The last complaint was filed two weeks ago. According to police investigators, this report stated that Lyons appeared to be high on drugs and was demanding money from Hunter. "The defendant then pushed Hunter/spouse against the kitchen sink." Hunter's 4-year-old son witnessed the beating.Hunter, who was pursuing a doctoral degree in marriage and family counseling at the University of Akron in addition to teaching at the University of Phoenix, ran a domestic violence group session every Wednesday at her office. Ironically, her website states that her company's services will "provide you with the knowledge and understanding of how relationships works and how problems can be resolved in even the most challenging situations."When Lyons met his wife, he had been recently released from prison. He had served time in Illinois for aggravated battery, intimidation and vehicular invasion. The repeat offender also has a criminal record in Missouri and Ohio. People thought that the pairing of both Hunter and Lyons was very odd. Hunter was viewed as being outgoing and friendly, while Lyons was quiet and reserved.Two weeks ago, with her young son in tow, Hunter had visited various building personnel where she worked, , to tell them to call the police immediately if they saw Lyons anywhere near the building. Many people in the office building had known about Lyon's prison record, and some even changed the locks on their doors when warned by Hunter.

Hunter called police to complain that she had been inundated with threatening phone calls from Lyons, where he allegedly said he wanted to punch her in the face and kill her. On July 20th, police issued a warrant for Lyon's arrest.A week before she was found dead, Lyons could not be found. When Hunter was discovered stabbed to death in her garage, her son was dropped off on a street corner. Investigators did not state who abandoned the boy on the street. The little boy was taken to county social workers and interviewed, where he said that his mother was killed and lying in a garage.Lyons was arrested last Monday and charged two days later with aggravated murder in his wife's stabbing death and domestic violence.Here's the thing, most past convicts are usually attempting to readjust to society's values, norms and relationships outside prison walls.Why this educated woman would marry a man who was convicted of aggravated assault is beyond me.

I'm not saying people don't change, but what I am saying is that this man couldn't have had that much to offer her. Lyons was enrolled in Hunter's anger management classes, for goodness sake. Clearly he needed some time to become stable both mentally and physically. Hunter was getting her doctorate in marriage and family counseling. As a professional, she should have left this one alone.

And what of the poor 4-year-old? How will he become anything different from his "father," when he has witnessed battery and possibly murder. With no Mother, and a "Father" who has abandoned him, who will love and nurture this child? As Mothers, we have to do better with our choices in men. If we can't at least do it for ourselves, we should at least do it for our children.

Barack Obama is starting to look like
Lyndon Johnson.
Johnson conducted major domestic legislation on civil rights,
poverty, Medicare and other social issues while conducting an unpopular
war in Vietnam.

Despite his domestic triumphs and widespread support among
non-Southerners in his own Democratic Party, he was forced to withdraw
in his bid for a new Presidential term because of the increasing
likelihood that he could not get his own party’s nomination.

Fast forward forty years later and another Democratic President is in
office. Obama, too, has accomplished much on domestic legislation and
has other sweeping proposals that most Democrats support.
He also has an increasingly unpopular war on his hands. It looks like
Afghanistan is becoming Obama’s Vietnam.
I hear from Democrats their frustration with Obama’s war strategy.
Many think this is George Bush warmed over. They appear shocked,
surprised, even betrayed.
They should not be. This is what Obama said he would do during the
campaign, but it appears that Democrats were not listening.

In July 2008, Obama said that his goals involved “ending the war in
Iraq responsibly; finishing the fight against al Qaeda and the Taliban.”

Democrats only heard the part about Iraq.

Adding 30,000 soldiers to fight the Taliban this year was not
contrary to his promise, but he is increasingly being castigated for it.

A year ago, 32 Democrats dissented on war funding for Afghanistan. This
year, 102 Democrats abandoned Obama’s strategy. That means Obama had to
continue war funding with Republican votes.
Interestingly, 12 Republicans also voted against continued funding.
This is a sign that a war-weary public is starting to influence the
Republican Party as well. It is hard to imagine that the continued
stalemate in Afghanistan can continue to have support from both parties
for another three to four years.

Nevertheless, as much as the Republicans would like to embarrass
Obama, they will not deny funding for the Afghan War anytime soon. With
the likelihood that they will increase their numbers in Congress, Obama
will probably find support for the Afghan War next year from
Republicans, not his own party.
If Democratic opposition has tripled in the House in a year (roughly
60% support the President now), then it is a good bet that a majority
will disapprove of funding the war next year.

By next year, Obama will be seeking Democratic support for his
domestic agenda but Republican support for the essential core of his
foreign policy — the Afghan War.
This is a scenario that looks increasingly like 1968.

By the way that the war is going now, it is going to be difficult for
Obama to significantly decrease the number of soldiers in Afghanistan
by 2012.

By next year, expect a prominent anti-war Democrat to make sounds
about running for President.
Rep. Dennis Kucinich is an obvious choice, but he has been on the
merry-go-round as a Presidential candidate so many times that he is not
likely to get the needed critical support. Another House Democrat may
appear as a challenger in the 2012 Democratic primaries to Obama. A more
likely scenario might be a senator.
No one is making sounds now, but a strong liberal, anti-war senator
like New York’s Charles Shumer, New Mexico’s Jeff Bingaman, Vermont’s
Patrick Leahy or Rhode Island’s Jack Reed could turn what should be a
simple victory tour into a gut-wrenching disembowelment of the
Democratic Party.

Far-fetched? Do not be so sure of that. Since the time of FDR, only
one incumbent Democratic President has survived renomination to become
re-elected. That was Bill Clinton.
Ted Kennedy nearly grabbed the Democratic nomination from Jimmy
Carter in 1980. That challenge contributed to Carter’s defeat in
November to Ronald Reagan.

While Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak visited Washington this week to talk about peace
gestures toward the Palestinians, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman
was planting a tree in a Jewish settlement in the West Bank -- an
indication of permanence that few Palestinians would welcome.

The contrast showed the confusion U.S. officials face in figuring out
how willing Israel might be to cede territory as part of a two-state
solution to the conflict.

President Obama's Middle East envoy, George J. Mitchell, has been
laboring for months to move Israelis and Palestinians into direct talks
on the core issues that divide them, including the future of Jewish
settlements built on land Israel occupied in the 1967 Middle East war.

The peace effort faces a major challenge on Sept. 26, when a 10-month
freeze of Israeli settlement construction is set to expire. The United
States and Israel for years have quarreled over Israeli construction in
the occupied West Bank that is widely considered illegal under
international law. The United States, which says settlement construction
undermines peace talks, pushed hard for the moratorium on building.

...

I think the freeze was a mistake. The Palestinians
would have more incentive to conclude a peace agreement if they knew
that every delay they made meant more settlers would have houses on the
West bank. While many buy into the proposition that these communities
are illegal, the basis for that opinion is certainly in dispute. Both
sides of this dispute see the other as squatters. Right now the
Palestinians have little incentive to anything but stall. They must be
made to see the September 26 deadline as real. If they are not in
direct negotiations at that time they should expect to see more
building.

Paris, France (CNN) -- French police are questioning a couple detained
following the discovery of the bodies of eight newborn babies at two
locations in northern France, the French Interior Ministry said
Thursday.

Gendarmes found the remains in the village of Villers-au-Tertre, south
of Lille, some in a home and others in the garden of another home.
Authorities scheduled a news conference for Thursday at 2 p.m. local
time (midday GMT).

The woman has been charged with voluntary manslaughter of minors under
the age of 15. The man is charged with refusing to expose crimes and
concealing bodies, prosecutors told CNN.

Agence-France Presse reported that the couple, both estimated to be in
their mid-forties, would appear before prosecutors later Thursday. The
woman is a nursing assistant while the man is a member of the local
council, a neighbor told AFP.

"These are attractive, helpful, polite and courteous people, who did
nothing to make you think them capable of anything abnormal," he said.

Another resident said the couple had two grown-up daughters and were
grandparents, AFP said. The pair had lived in the village for at least
15 years, neighbors said.

Former mayor Daniel Collignon said Villers-au-Tertre was a quiet, rural
community. "I'm still in shock," he told AFP.

Police with sniffer dogs searched the two homes after the new owners of
one of them found the bones of two bodies in the garden. The house had
previously belonged to the mother of the arrested woman, AFP said.

Six more bodies were then found at the couple's home in another part of
the village, a local councilor told reporters.

According to public documents obtained by
Americans for Limited Government (ALG), Michael Steele, Chairman of the
Republican National Committee (RNC), is as fiscally irresponsible in
his personal life as he has been in the management of the RNC. A rough
estimate indicates that Steele is obligated to pay 117 percent of his
take-home pay in mortgages and taxes on his $1.7 million home in Upper
Marlboro, Maryland.

This is no ordinary home, but is a 6,440
square foot mansion with 6.5 bathrooms set on an almost four-acre lot.

The monthly payment on the first mortgage
is $9,972.20. The payment on the second would be around $1,200 for a
total of around $11,236.20.

The current property
tax assessment for this home is $17,468.76 per year, which comes
to $1,455.73 a month. Adding the mortgage payments and tax payments
suggests that the monthly liability for the house comes to around
$12,691.93 (not to mention homeowner’s insurance and utilities.) So
how much money would you need to make to pay for an estate of this
magnitude? The short answer is a lot. The general rule for mortgage
qualification is that your house payment plus property tax and insurance
shouldn’t
exceed 28 percent of your gross income. Using the 28 percent
figure, a person would need a gross annual income of approximately
$544,000 to qualify for this type of loan ($544,000* .28 /12 =
$12,693.33).

By Adam Bitely
In an election year, it is far too common for political parties and
certain loyal followers to chastise those that align along similar
ideological lines when they criticize policy positions of candidates and
elected officials that contradict their campaign rhetoric. While they
are trying to protect their brand and their candidates, they sweep
information that voters need under the rug.

Only after a new crop of politicians are in office that promised one
thing and then do another, do Americans discover that in Washington,
D.C., everything is politics as usual.
But, by then, it’s too late.

Consider that in 1994, the year of the Republican Revolution in the
monumental mid-term elections during Bill Clinton’s first term as
President, the GOP had a platform that was widely composed of hot issues
for conservatives. Once in Congress though, the platform known as the
“Contract with America” slowly fell to the wayside. Within twelve
years, the class of 1994 was unrecognizable — devoid of the
conservative ideals that they came to power to champion.
Get full story here.

By Kevin Mooney
So now it’s called a “clean energy jobs” bill, replete with
government inducements for contractors operating on pre-approved
“efficiency” projects. Concerns over global warming and/or climate
change are “so 2009” and are no longer in vogue.
A draft version of the anti-energy legislation Senate Democrats are
expected to roll out next week omits politically unpopular “cap and
trade” policies, but includes rebates under the “Home Star” and “Silver
Star” programs that deserve careful scrutiny. Union bosses who have
received very little legislative return on their substantial investments
into the Democratic Party view green jobs as an angle into
monopolizing the construction industry.

After losing out on “card check” and binding arbitration, the idea
now is for congressional leaders to secure union favors through more
obscure legislation that escapes media attention. For example, under
Section 3003 of the pending anti-energy bill, “The Secretary of Energy,
in consultation with the Secretary of the Treasury and the
Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA),” are
authorized “to create a Federal Rebate Processing System with a
database and information technology system for submitting reimbursement
claims by rebate aggregators (RAs).”

By Robert Romano
Last week, the Obama Administration released its Friday afternoon
surprise: another
$1.47 trillion in debt for the year of 2010. The news comes in the
context of imminent tax increases due to occur on January 1st, 2011 as
the Bush tax cuts expire.As
reported by Art Laffer in the Wall Street Journal, “the highest
federal personal income tax rate will go 39.6% from 35%, the highest
federal dividend tax rate pops up to 39.6% from 15%, the capital gains
tax rate to 20% from 15%, and the estate tax rate to 55% from zero.”

The Obama Administration is okay with that. So are Nancy Pelosi and
Harry Reid, who have no plans to make the Bush tax cuts permanent.
Democrats are telling the American people that rather than cutting
unsustainable spending and balancing the budget the way families balance
theirs, that instead they want taxpayers to finance Washington’s
increasingly indefensible spending habits.

Today, spending reflects revenues as the political class wishes them
to be, not as they actually are.
Get full story here.

Newlove and
McNeley were both found dead in Logar province after going missing last
week [EPA]

The body of a second US navy sailor who was captured
in eastern Afghanistan last week has been recovered, according to
US and Afghan officials.
25-year-old Jarod Newlove's body was recovered in Logar province on
Wednesday evening.

US military officials said his family had
been notified of his death.
"The coalition told our criminal police director
of the district that the body belonged to the foreign soldier they were
looking for," Mohammad Rahim Amin, a local government chief in the
Baraki Barak district in western Logar, said.
Newlove and another sailor, Justin McNeley, went missing last week in
Logar province. McNeley's body was
recovered on Sunday.
The Taliban initially said that Newlove was
captured alive. Zabiullah Mujahid, a spokesman for the Taliban, did not
offer an explanation for how he died.

Mujahid did, however, tell
The Associated Press news agency in Kabul that two days ago the Taliban
left the "body of a dead American soldier for the US forces".

'Security
tightened'
Both sailors were assigned to a training school for Afghan security
forces, according to US military officials. But the school is
headquartered in Kabul.
Nato officials have not explained why the two sailors were traveling
in Logar, an increasingly dangerous province in eastern Afghanistan.

General
Mustafa Mosseini, the chief of police of Logar province, said Nato
troops removed Newlove's body on Wednesday. He said he believed that the
body had been washed downstream after rains on Tuesday night.
Mosseini also noted that in recent days, the Taliban were being
pressured by Nato forces in the area.
"The security was being tightened," he said. "Searches continued from
both air and the ground. Militants were moving into Pakistan."

A reader to sportsbybrooks.com was at the game and sent in this
account of what happened:

A guy walked into the bleacher seats wearing a LeBron
James Miami Heat Jersey. He was booed violently, and by the fifth
Inning, people were throwing peanuts and beer cups at him.That’s when police escorted him out of the section. While walking
down the stairs, a guy knocked the beer cup out of his hand, and
started swearing at him. By the end of the row, a fat guy in a green
shirt (who was previously flicking him off), got up in his face. The
police had to restrain him from attacking the Yankees & Indians fans
who were booing him.His girlfriend, who had been flicking people off and swearing was
shoved to the ground by a guy in a grey shirt. She started crying, and
also had to be restrained.The police officers who escorted him out, got a standing ovation
from the entire bleacher section.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Heat didn’t step in and offer a
consolation prize to the fan in order to engender some sort of positive
public reaction.
Protip to Heat p.r.: Don’t offer Marlins tickets.

"I was not invited to the wedding
because I think Hillary
and Bill, properly, want to keep this thing for
Chelsea and her soon-to-be husband. You don't want two presidents at
one wedding! All the secret service, guests going through [metal
detectors], all the gifts being torn apart."

The bad news is that he handled the case poorly and that there were
multiple missteps by him and his staff along with the NYPD:

Mr.
Paterson personally contacted the woman, Sherr-una Booker, and urged
her to help him contain any political fallout from the episode, Ms.
Kaye’s report shows, and even called her after he asked the attorney
general to investigate the matter for possible criminal prosecution.

But those contacts did not rise to a criminal charge of witness
tampering, the report said, because the governor did not specifically
try to prevent Ms. Booker from testifying or making an appearance in
court.

On Wednesday, Mr. Paterson’s lawyer hailed the findings and said they
supported the governor’s repeated insistence that he had never abused
his office or broken the law. The governor told investigators that he
had contacted Ms. Booker the night before a scheduled court appearance
in the case only because he wanted to know whether she was spreading
rumors about his personal life. Ms. Booker supported his account in her
testimony.

“The governor is pleased that Judge Kaye, after a thorough and
independent investigation, has exonerated him” of any criminal
wrongdoing, the lawyer, Theodore V. Wells Jr., said in a statement.

Ms. Kaye recommended that the Bronx district attorney consider charges
against Mr. Johnson over the episode at Ms. Booker’s apartment on Oct.
31, 2009, in which Ms. Booker said Mr. Johnson tore off her Halloween
costume, choked her and shoved her into a mirrored dresser. Mr. Johnson
refused to cooperate with Ms. Kaye’s investigation.

Ms. Kaye also said the New York City police erred in their response the
evening of the episode.

While Ms. Kaye found that the governor did not break any law, her
four-month investigation raises numerous questions about the actions of
Mr. Paterson as his administration sought to conceal Ms. Booker’s
accusations from the public.

Kaye is also investigating
whether Paterson perjured himself in how he obtained tickets to baseball
games in violation of state law. That's a far more serious issue, and
could result in criminal charges being filed.

On the ever-popular Facebook, words of support, encouragement and disbelief plaster a wall with 2,700-plus followers dedicated to the elderly, ever-elusive San Diego bank robber dubbed the “Geezer Bandit”.

“This is the first time I’ve heard of this guy,” wrote one Facebook fan. “And he just became my personal hero.”

“Financial crisis in the US,” another admirer commented. “The old guy rips off banks. I would say totally understandable.”

Similarly, more than 93,000 Facebook users have joined one of the many pages dedicated to the nefarious activities of Colton Harris-Moore, aka the “Barefoot Bandit”, who was recently apprehended in the Bahamas.

The Geezer Bandit and the Barefoot Bandit are among the latest arrivals in a decades long phenomena —America’s selective love affair with serial bank robbers — an infatuation that took hold in the 1930s with such legends as Bonnie and Clyde and John Dillinger. Books have been written. Movies have been made.

“Fascination and hero-worship for undeserving criminals is a pathetic piece of our popular culture,” James Alan Fox, Lipman Family Professor of Criminology, Law and Public Policy at Northeastern recently wrote in a blog entry on boston.com. “All sorts of offenders, no matter how despicable their crimes, have been revered by a sizable minority of Americans.”

By Allan LengelThe FBI could be getting more powers when it comes to getting data on Internet activity.Reporter Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post reports that the Obama administration wants to change a law so that it would allow the FBI to compel companies over individual’s records of their Internet activity without a court order.

Under the push, the FBI would not be able to get content of the email, the Post reported. But it would be able to get email addresses individuals are writing to; times and dates the e-mails were sent and received;and possibly a user’s browser history.For Full Story

Previously, under the 1986 law, a person selling crack got the same
sentence as someone selling 100 times the amount of powdered cocaine.
The ratio will now go to 18 to 1.

The old bill became law while crack-cocaine was spinning out of
control and savaging urban areas. But critics said it amounted to giving
harsher sentences to African Americans who sold crack and lesser
sentences to whites who were selling more of the powder cocaine.

The bill now goes before President Obama for his signature.
The bill also eliminates the five-year mandatory minimum sentence for
first-time possession of crack, marking the first time Congress has
eliminated a mandatory minimum sentence since the Nixon administration,
according to the Associated Press.

“The time is long overdue to fix this law that the U.S. Sentencing
Commission agrees disproportionately punishes African-Americans. After
many years of hard work on this issue, we are one step closer to
eliminating this inequity in federal sentencing,” House Judiciary
Committee Chairman, John Coyers Jr. said in a statement.

Attorney General Eric Holder also applauded the bill, saying in a
statment:
“I congratulate the House of Representatives on today’s passage of
the Fair Sentencing Act. The bill greatly reduces the unwarranted
disparity in sentences for crack and powder cocaine offenses, and will
go a long way toward ensuring that our sentencing laws are tough,
consistent, and fair.”

SCLC TODAY

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